


evermore

by SouthernBird



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman Zero | Mega Man Zero, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, But X Grows Out His Hair, Clone!Zero - Freeform, Elf Wars, Feelings Gone Unsaid, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Violence, M/M, Post Maverick Wars, Pre Copy X Era, Prompt: Helmetless, Prompt: Red, Requited Unrequited Love, XZeroweek2021, depictions of war, implied assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29503803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: [XZero Week 2021]Nevertheless, the touch stays, lingers too long and too hot, all pyre fire and woeful remission. “It… really does suit you.”
Relationships: X & Zero, X/Zero (Rockman)
Kudos: 5





	evermore

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Leaf.PNG's Long Haired X](https://twitter.com/leaf_png/status/1347948717261824001?s=20). A bit more angsty than I am sure they intended, but this is me and the prompt kind of stayed with me until I did it. Also, my writing takes forever, so this will be one of three prompts which is a 'more than one prompt' special, haha. Happy XZero Week though, y'all! 
> 
> Prompt: Red/Helmetless

Smoke reeks like a wispy specter fumed of ash and dust across the battlefield, the trumpets of war falling quiet with a deafening drum as X waits for the final thimble to drop into the charred dirt. He is still, entirely still, what breath could calm the frazzled heat along the circuits of his overworked vents lost in the dismal hope that sparks, then wanes, then trembles at prospect of divinity infringing upon what was another lost battle. 

It had been nothing short of brutality, nothing short of the maniacal throes of conflict that intends to rise again and again like ill-fated Lazarus stepping from the grave as immortality to beings of titanium and carbon fiber know not the veil of darkness until the last line is cut. No, this beast, no, this _monster_ who has the face of soldier he loved with a heart glass fragile has roared fierce and homicidal and so many are dead, so many are lost, so many are gone into the granules of sands that march forth though X feels as though his own world expired years ago when one dawn he awoke only to discover that his partner of decades had slipped into near terminal sleep just hours before in the slip of night. 

The war has been nothing but a game of cat and mouse, and the azure Hunter, now leader of a makeshift city erected upon the ruinous pyres of fallen comrades and innocents alike, has been chased and teased and _tasted_ , forced down and bruised and smeared until his veins are inked with tar and his joints stiffen in cold, cold dread at the first rumbles of the earth whenever he arrives. The noise, a clattering of chaos that deafens both his aural receptors and his mind as every nook of his body screams silently at the promise of rapine that will come if he is caught again in the spider’s web. 

But now this silence reigns sick and uneasy as rains upon him a hollowness, a deep trail of fingerprints pressed into the synthetic fiber of his skin, a mark of the myriad of vessels who have touched him for their own advantage. His eyes—a gaze that was perhaps likened to the foliage of summer glens hiding the babbling creek sides of forest sanctuaries—stare about at a shadow that stands above the wreckage, a faceless shape that feels familiar, breathtakingly so, but also hardly quells the anxiety that threaten to rips vine-like from his throat as the monster clad with gilded armaments of opalescence and genocide, lays atop the corpses of reploids too unfortunate to have seen another moment of the clouds thundering about the heavens until the void struck them right down. 

There is a groan, a tumultuous grinding of metal amidst a glow of green that is serene, so deceptively out of place that it feels anachronistic, sweeps X back to a time when the loneliness did not well in his heart placid and cordial, did not bittersweetly drown him until the light faded from what desires he kept so close to his breast. God, he is tired, so damn tired, so alone and near static-shocked with fear that he cannot even allow to bubble forth in acid drops from his lips, every shift of a body that once was at his side scratching pinprick along the cavity of his chest. 

Then, that shade of death that stands triumphant through the smoke of victory, moves towards him, stepping closer inch by inch and no, that is not X’s heart playing pitter patter between what should be ribs, that could never be for he is the last hope of what is left of the delicate shells of people left behind in this cruel war. 

Yet, a zephyr dances between the two of them, gentle yet teasing as the ends of his hair drift to brush faint along his jaw as X had forgotten Zero—no, Omega’s—hand still gripped his helmet in a grip of iron. The length of his hair, warm-toned brown with the slightest of curl, is now a reminder of time’s passage that has been all too long and all too brief until red, glorious and vibrant and arrogant red, bleeds into view. Fractured knees buckle from a cobweb weakness that pours forth soot and age from his almost-soul that victorioustone of crimson is nearly incandescent against the wreckage that the former Hunter manages to stay vertical. 

And, save him, there before him stands a veritable god of war, waning away the prolific sagas of Tyr and Ares into some dismal acclamation of lesser deities who lack the bite; though perhaps it is Tyr’s spear that gives this one his bite and perhaps it is Ares’ shield that affords this one his might. It is awe-inspiring, the tales that could be woven by fate makers as though the spindly fingers thread crimson spindle through their miles-long tapestries as testament of heralded victory of a beast all his indirect making. X would weep at the vision that swims in his eyes, would fall into pieces there in this chasm of nevermore, yet his spine stiffens with a pain that has ached and throbbed through the grueling days of days spent alone. 

Even then, there is a ringing, a tolling bell that echoes in the corners of the attic of his mind, shatters the stained glass he so meticulously crafted as homage to a warrior he thought he had long buried and allow time to have—no, though, there he is, red, so red and so alive that X truly is so irrecoverable, so gone that he could scream until his throat tears bloody, until his lungs burst from every precipice he wants so badly to fall from. 

“Zero,” is a whisper that betrays him, timid and worrisome as eyes a darker blue regard him eerily. Those eyes are not the same that have coaxed into X’s dreams and most certainly are not the same that have invaded his nightmares; they leave him all the same devoid yet brimming with constrictions and proverbial lacerations all the same. He is tired. He is awake. He is not drifting like cotton in a stream watching the images of his desires well into some lackluster fruition but God, he would pray that it would be so if the eyes that peered into his being weren’t so dark and afar, at least so he could imagine the memories to his preference. 

Nothing happens for a short while as the two of them gaze upon another and X dies a slow, agonizing death in wait. He has been patient, though more often than not, what he would give to not be which stands tumultuous in his mind as what he needs and what he wants are combatant. What he would give to cast aside the silks and velvets of the calls for salvation, to fling away the garland of thorns that rip into his scalpfor he is no hero nor is he a man—he is just simply there, cold and burning and wanting yet not. He hurts, he hurts so terribly much, and he hates himself that the very man he loves… 

… Regards him with a placid awkwardness that should instead be some jovial comradery that is terribly missing from this reunion. 

No matter; X can stand upright, he can lower his arms, and he can suck it all down, swallow all his affections and tuck them away like dried flowers pressed into the pages of a lovelorn book. He can square his shoulders and present a brave face. He can do this, all of this, whatever _this_ is. However, the smile that he attempts is barely there, hardly creasing the corner of his mouth, and unfortunately, Zero ( _not_ _Zero_ ) notices, but says nothing of it. 

“… Your hair,” the warrior briefly notes, obviously observant of the brunet tresses now waving down X’s shoulders. “You… grew it out?” 

And, how does he react? What reply could he emit that would undertake some affable tone that would alleviate the thick and heady reeds that burrows onto their backs. Pray tell, X cannot gather forth what could possibly have corroded into their friendship because he is far certain _who_ left, far certain who faded into haunting shade to leave him to salvage the shrapnel of their friends and brothers-in-arms only to fail again and again against the barrage of a literal devil hellbent on enflaming every scrap of life X has attempted to rally together. 

That same devil still lies dormant, seemingly dead but the former Hunter knows better, seen better, is fully aware of the demon who has possesses that giant’s frame with blotted plums of ivy wrapped around each limb like a sinning puppeteer. As the minutes tick by, the inevitable shall surely arrive, a deep groan of hellfire as the beast awakens with a hate so overwhelming the dirt of the earth is scorched bloody by it. 

With a bite of his lip, the First of his kind closes his eyes and just tries, tries, and tries to forget, to vanish into the trembling shine of a waning sun to never have to face this head on once more. His wish is never granted, and that is just the way of his life, as the scrunch of a step draws him from the blackness of his thoughts, away from the library of tomes he has carried away as some historian of death. 

Affliction is expected, and will surely be sharp and pulsing when it hits along his jaw; perhaps it will snap the bolt that hold it in place and his mouth will never close, incapable of speech. X finds some consolation in such a feat as pain is quick and ache is unceasing but what should come never does. To deserve such abrasion would suit him; after all, there he is, not one word of gratitude having left his lungs. Thankless he is not, but not one syllable pairs with another for some semblance of tête-à-tête so he remains subdued in vacuous reverence. 

Yet what comes instead of a strike of a palm or a knuckle comes a caress damnably tender, a gentle touch of knuckles along his torn cheek to float along the skin down his neck, open and exposed from the nicks of claws to pry him open for other, more sinister desires, until fingertips hold a lock of chestnut as though it were as delicate as a rose petal. 

A crack nearly shatters him, a heel pressed into the fine bars of the birdcage he shoved his heart into, and this savior, no, this martyr of man and machine who has been placed on the frontlines of the chess board of war for nearly a century now, bleeds from within. There is a maw of a hole right at the epicenter of his being,spilling forth all the demure feelings that he has attempted to thwart off with duct tape excuses and flimsy locks. Somehow though, his features only crease just so at the internal cacophony as everything red is a gloaming rise that threatens to cast away the umbra that veils along his eyes. 

“… It suits you,” and that is all that is muttered in the infinite space that encompasses them, an ambivalence blooming forth the spotted splendor of wildflowers drearily scattered amongst hammered iron nails. Nevertheless, the touch stays, lingers too long and too hot, all pyre fire and woeful remission. “It… really does suit you.” 

And that is how he comes erupt into a lonely sob, a shell of his so-called omnipotence as his eyes shut to the hues of the world, all sepia and gray and red. In his own little darkness, his heart shudders and becomes a foolish traitor, clinging thing that sings high and sweet in a hymn once thought to have faded with tiredness. No, his nerves are alight, those embers that barely kept him warm through his time walking these lands alone now singeing into a filigree of amber circuitry and he begs against it silently, pleads to never crave what is never to be his—. 

And he presses into the touch to seal his fate, a white flag surrender as a storm brews just at the horizon evermore. 


End file.
